Several years ago a cartoon in The New Yorker showed a stern St. Peter at the Pearly Gates pronouncing thunderous judgment on a smarmy-looking supplicant with briefcase and portfolio, “..and I sentence you to one-thousand years of PowerPoint!” At last surcease is nigh! Have you heard about PechaKucha?

Pecha Kucha (Japanese for chit-chat) may be our savior. It’s a breakthrough presentation technique developed ten years ago in Japan that’s an ingenious, but simple inversion of Powerpoint: A PechaKucha presentation consists of exactly 20 slides that are shown for precisely 20 seconds each. Each slide automatically changes in 20 seconds, and the presenter must limit his narrative to fit, keeping the presentations lineal, concise and fast-paced. In 2004, a few cities in Europe began holding PechaKucha Nights, the first of several hundred cities that have since launched similar events around the world. So far, PKNs have been held in 600+ cities worldwide. –gil maurer